Irish Poll shows increased Anti-War sentiment:

NEW IRISH POLL SHOWS
NEAR 80% SUPPORT FOR
NEUTRALITY OF THE STATE
AND SIMILAR OPPOSITION
TO WAR AGAINST SYRIA:

ALMOST EIGHTY PER CENT of Irish people say the Government should not support military intervention in Syria without a UN mandate according to a new poll.

The poll carried out by Red C polling organisation was commissioned by the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA) and also showed that an almost identical number of Irish adults believe that Ireland should have a policy of neutrality.

The 1,000 respondents were given a number of different options as to what extent they agreed with a variety of statements with Red C using the information to gauge sentiment.

SEPTEMBER 2013:

Irish people support a policy of neutrality and not sending military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria according to a poll:

The Red C poll commissioned by the Peace & Neutrality Alliance shows:

1.        78%  of the Irish people support a policy of Irish Neutrality

2.        67% of the Irish people are opposed to Ireland & the EU sending arms and military

supplies to anti-government groups in Syria. 

3.        61% of the Irish people are opposed to sending Irish troops to Syria

4.        79% of the Irish people do not support a war on Syria without a UN mandate

Neutrality

When asked whether ‘Ireland should have a policy of neutrality’ there was 78 per cent agreement. 61 per cent said that Irish troops should not now be sent to Syria.

Support for Neutrality was strongest in the 18-34 age group = 85%. General support for neutrality has increased since a previous poll which registered 69%.

PANA Chairman Roger Cole said that the poll results show that support for neutrality is now “deepening rather than weakening.” "Irish people fought in the national war of independence against an empire. And one of the consequences of that was that we don't want to become part of a military alliance - we don't want to get involved in other people's wars," he said.

"We're a small country - we should get a grip on what the real world is, and in the real world small countries shouldn't get involved in other people's wars." “Approximately 8 in 10 Irish people are now in favour of neutrality which is roughly the same number of people who believe Ireland should not support a war on Syria without a UN mandate. This Syrian conflict has displaced millions with the UN describing it as the worst humanitarian crisis in nearly twenty years,” he said.

"PANA has campaigned for the right of the Irish people to have a foreign policy with a commitment to Irish neutrality at its core. This poll shows that we have the support of the massive majority of the Irish people. It shows that like the people of the USA and the UK they are tired and fed up with the doctrine of perpetual war on offer from the political leaders of the UK, the USA and France" Mr Cole stated.

The poll result so shocked the warmongers and pro-US, pro-NATO forces in Ireland, including the rabid anti-neutrality bloc in the government Fine Gael party that they arranged with corporate media to suppress the information last week when it was announced at a press conference organised by Peace and Neutrality Alliance, Ireland's leading Peace Group. Only one newspaper group, based in Cork, carried the story with the main Dublin papers and the public broadcaster RTE failing to carry any reports.

This shows both the contempt and fear of the warmongers against democracy and the people's right to say no to their vicious schemes of permanent warfare. The defeat of the US/UK war plans against Syria last month by massive popular opposition was a hugely significant event contrasting with the way they got away with imposing the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

The Irish poll of rejection of war and imperialism was manifested in spite of the billion-dollar propaganda campaign against Syria and Iran by the US and its boot-lickers in Europe. A great victory for democracy, peace and mutual security based on international law and the UN Charter.

 The full poll details may be downloaded from the PANA website here, or from the link in the sidebar:

http://www.pana.ie

Ireland says no to US demands for Snowden arrest:

                                                     The High Courts of Justice, Dublin.

DUBLIN HIGH COURT
REJECTS US APPLICATION
FOR SNOWDEN ARREST
WARRANT:


Ireland has denied the U.S. an arrest warrant for whistle blower Edward Snowden in case he lands in this country. The High Court in Dublin ruled that Washington DC security chiefs failed to show where alleged crimes had been committed by the former intelligence contractor.The US applied for a provisional arrest warrant on Friday through its Dublin embassy.

Officials made the move after former NSA employee, Mr Snowden, contacted 21 countries, including Ireland, seeking asylum. There were concerns by US Officials that the fugitive intelligence officer, who has been living in the transit section of Moscow's Sheremetyevo-2 airport, would pass through Shannon Airport en route to South America. A request for asylum in Ireland can only be considered if Snowden makes an application on arrival in the country according to Government sources but, on a previous occasion asylum was granted to hundreds of Bosnian refugees although they had not yet arrived in Ireland

Judge Colm Mac Eochaidh refused the request for an arrest warrant on the grounds that no information had been given by the US authorities about where the alleged offences took place. The ruling also stated that the decision was taken because the US failed to show where the theft of government property took place or what had been stolen.Judge Mac Eochaidh said offences may relate to theft of information and its misuse rather than to physical property but that assumptions could not be made that it took place in Hawaii.

Former NSA analyst Mr Snowden has requested asylum across the globe, in Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela.He is wanted for allegedly leaking details of secret surveillance operations in the UK and US and has been in diplomatic limbo since his arrival in Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23.

RUSSIA RESPONDS

Russian president Vladimir Putin said Mr Snowden would have to stop leaking US secrets if he wanted to get asylum there. Russia’s foreign minister has rejected American demands to extradite Edward Snowden. Sergei Lavrov said Snowden had not crossed the Russian border and insisted that Russia has nothing to do with him, his relations with US justice, or his travel plans. He angrily criticised American demands for Snowden’s extradition and warnings of negative consequences if Moscow fails to comply.

Mr Lavrov said that accusing Russia of “violation of US laws and even some sort of conspiracy” with regard to Snowden is “absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable”. He would not specify the location of Snowden, who booked a Havana-bound flight from Moscow a week ago but, did not show up on the plane.

 

SHITTER SHATTER BATS FOR US SPY AGENCIES:

The Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter says there's nothing to prevent the US from making a fresh application to the Irish courts for the extradition of whistleblower Ed Snowden, should he enter the state following the refusal by the High Court to issue a provisional arrest warrant, in the event Snowden arrives in Ireland seeking political asylum.

                                                                  Shatter at a party conference

 

Responding to the High Court judgement, Minister Shatter said the Irish and U.S. authorities are in close contact with regard to Snowden.He said it was worth noting that the High Court refused to issue the arrest warrant "on the basis of specific information, rather than a determination as to whether an individual should or should not be extradited " Once again Shatter displays his contempt for the Irish public with a partisan propagandist claim on behalf of a foreign government. Also, he has no right commenting on a legal case before the courts in any manner whatsoever which amounts to contempt of court for which he should be called before the Justice hearing the case to account for his disgraceful remarks.

Shatter, a known pro-Zionist and apologist for Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank Palestinian Territories, including the piratical attacks on Irish ships travelling to Gaza; the illegal detention, kidnap, assault and stealing of property from Irish citizens on board shows that he is unfit to be a minister in the Irish Government and should be dismissed forthwith by An Taoiseach if the government had any respect for itself or the people it purports to govern under the Irish constitution.

Leaks

Edward Snowden leaked classified US intelligence documents to the media last month. Once he was unveiled as the NSA whistleblower, he fled to Hong Kong and from there to Moscow, where he has been residing in a transit area of the city's airport for weeks. He has subsequently released intelligence claiming that the US has been monitoring secret, official EU communications. Snowden has sought political asylum in dozens of countries - several of which have refused. However, Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua are enthusiastic to grant him asylum, if he can get out of Moscow - and is given uninhibited passage through international airspace.

A diplomatic incident a week ago when an aircraft carrying Bolivian President Morales was forced to break its journey and land in Vienna because of rumours that Mr Snowden was on board has provoked outrage throughout Latin America at the high-handed and lawless activities of Washington in its attempts to apprehend Mr Snowden.

Apart from the brass-necked effrontery of the US Administration in seeking the assistance of Irish courts in their vindictive campaign of intimidation against Mr Snowden while they continue to commit acts of murderous violence across the globe against the civilian populations of the several countries they are engaged in military actions in, the provocative intervention of Shatter on their behalf must be condemned and opposed vigorously by all progressive and democratic forces here.

THATCHER KICKS BUCKET, UPROAR IN HELL!

THATCHER KICKS BUCKET;

BUT, CONSTERNATION IN HELL AS DEMONS PROTEST

THERE IS NO ROOM

FOR ANY MORE

IMMIGRANTS:

Pope Francisco requested to temporarily

restore LIMBO until dispute is settled!

 

 

Former Brit Prime Minister, Margaret Hilda Thatcher, died early Monday, 8 April in London from the affects of a stroke and promptly divided the country as she did when she was alive. The usual gang of sycophants, who expressed admiration for Dame Hilda's combative class war policies, queued up on British TV channels to whitewash the monster's career and attempt to give a veneer of humanity to the personality who made it her mission to wipe out effective trade unionism in Britain along with the consensus Welfare State established in 1945 by the post-WW2 Labour Government.

 

Never an economist herself, Thatcher swallowed whole the Neo-Liberal fantasies of the US right-wing and continued to parrot the same ideas throughout her time in Downing Street(1979-90) until she was unceremoniously dumped by her own Conservative Party in 1990. Hailed today by the sycophant circus in London as a politician of "conviction"; so was Hitler, so it depends on the content of the actual "convictions" whether this appellation has any worthwhile meaning or not. She did succeed in doing something Hitler failed to do with his Luftwaffe and Blitz on Britain during WW2, that is, destroy Britain's manufacturing base which Thatcher did with the stroke of a pen with her "privatisation" programme of Britain's major traditional industries like shipbuilding, steel production, vehicle manufacture, aircraft design and manufacture and of course her greatest "triumph" the destruction of the coal mining industry, producing large-scale unemployment and the heartless wiping out of communities and even whole towns in those areas of the country dependent on this industry.

This correspondent is proud to have been a member of the Dublin Council of Trade Unions during the 1984 Miners Strike in Britain, when we organised two ship containers per week, one to Liverpool and one to Cardiff each week while the strike continued; filled with food, clothing, household goods, children's toys and other requirements for the miners and their families to counter Thatcher's aims to starve the strikers into submission. We also arranged for the transfer of NUM funds to Dublin banks where they were safe from confiscation by Thatcher's kangaroo "Industrial Relations Court", staffed by legal muppets of the Tory Party intent on trying to bankrupt the Trade Unions by confiscating their funds. Despite an attempt by Thatcher's government to sequester the funds in Dublin, the Irish Courts refused to comply as the Irish Republic's constitution forbade the confiscation of private property.

Thatcher aligned herself with Cold-War Washington, especially the Reagan regime which had the same dogmatic character as herself, supported the continued possession of nuclear weapons (the Trident submarine fleet bought from the US cost £12Bn) and NATO's first strike policy; During her first year as Prime Minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; indulged in flag-waving anti-Soviet and anti-communist/socialist rhetoric at every opportunity all in the name of "freedom" and "liberty" but, had no compunction in offering political and military support to such odious regimes of murder and oppression as Pinochet's Chile and Botha's Apartheid South Africa. Also as noted in today's bulletins from Tel-Aviv, she was a firm supporter of Zionist Israel and its brutal oppression of the Palestinian people. Freedom and Liberty how are ye, a dyed-in-the-wool hypocrite never advancing an inch beyond her petty-bourgeois madam's restricted view of the world in general.

 

In the Falklands/Malvinas war in I982 following the invasion of the islands by the Military Dictatorship then ruling in Argentina, Thatcher achieved further infamy by personally ordering the sinking of the Argentine Navy light cruiser General Belgrano by the nuclear submarine HMS Conquerer, despite the fact that Belgrano was leaving the conflict zone and returning to port. Three hundred and twenty-three members of Belgrano's crew died in the incident. Over 700 men were rescued from the open ocean despite cold seas and stormy weather. The losses from Belgrano totalled nearly half of the Argentine deaths in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict. This callous act caused the Irish Government, then led by Charles J. Haughey as Taoiseach, to withdraw its support for the EU imposed sanctions against Argentina and led to a bitter diplomatic hostility between Dublin and London while Haughey was Taoiseach. Despite railing against the military dictators in Argentina, Thatcher hypocritically continued to rely on the neighbouring odious Pinochet regime in Chile for intelligence against the Argentines and territorial backup for stray British aircraft having to land there during the conflict. When Pinochet, under threat of arrest for war crimes by courts in France and Spain arrived in London years later, Thatcher was the only British politician to provide accommodation and a welcome for the despicable war criminal and murderer.

 

Thatcher entertains War Criminal Pinochet in London.

Thatcher's policy in Northern Ireland was an unmitigated disaster, prolonging the conflict for many more years than was necessary given the legitimate demands for the nationalist-minded population there for the same democratic standards which she lauded for the rest of the UK. In 1980 and 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison carried out hunger strikes in an effort to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed in 1976 under the preceding Labour government. Bobby Sands began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions. Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political", but nevertheless the UK government privately contacted Sinn Fein leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end. After the deaths of Sands and nine others, some rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of their political status. Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes; in 1982, Sinn Féin politician Danny Morrison described Thatcher as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".Thatcher's militarism and gung-ho employment of illegal state murder campaigns only alienated the population further and consolidated support for the IRA military responses resulting in the assassination attempt on herself and her Conservative Party colleagues in Brighton in 1984.

As with all despots, Thatcher eventually got her comeuppance in 1990 when, despite opposition by most of her cabinet colleagues, she insisted on pursuing her policy of imposing a local tax dubbed the "Poll Tax", officially the "Community Charge" ostensibly to fund local government services which she had stripped of funding for many years previously and was first imposed in Scotland. Popular opposition in Scotland led to the wipeout of her Conservative Party there and in England & Wales a mounting crescendo of militant resistance led to the events of 31 March 1990 in London when a massive demonstration of over 200,000 protesters blockaded central London from 11am in the morning until late in the night. Aggressive police tactics, stupid in the extreme since they were severely outnumbered by the huge crowd, led to the most serious outbreak of public violence ever in the history of the British capital.

As a large cohort of mounted police charged the crowd in Trafalgar Square, trampling many people in the process, outraged protesters resisted and a violent melee spread throughout the central area. Windows were smashed and buildings were set alight creating a scene of utter mayhem in full view of the international press and TV, rapidly broadcast throughout the world. What became known as the Poll Tax Riot shocked Thatcher's cabinet and the British ruling elite, especially as they were told the next day by London and Provincial police chiefs that the police forces did not possess enough resources to contain the following weekend's planned demonstrations in every major city in Britain by the organisers of the Anti-Poll Tax Campaign and Martial Law might have to be considered as an option. The implementation of the poll tax in England & Wales was immediately postponed and in November that year Thatcher was forced into a leadership challenge by her cabinet colleagues and replaced by John Major who abolished Thatcher's poll tax on the day he became Prime Minister.

              

THE POLL TAX RIOT, LONDON, 31 MARCH 1990:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRj2K0ulD8Q

The only liberty Thatcher was really interested in was the liberty to exploit by the capitalist economic and financial system by restricting trade union rights in Britain and facilitating the export of British industrial jobs to Sweatshop Asia and de-regulating the City of London stock market allowing the likes of Goldman Sachs to set up shop in London along with the other fake credit fraudsters with their pyramid schemes which has led directly to the current world crisis of financial capitalism and the vicious class-war austerity attacks on working peoples standard of living throughout the  developed capitalist countries. Thatcher's deliberate and planned destruction of Britain's industrial base has left the country floundering in the weakest position of the major EU economies as it struggles to survive the consequences of the collapse of the so-called financial "industry", a corporate conspiracy which produces nothing but debt based on false credit and is succeeding in its audacious claims on the savings of ordinary people to pay off its gambling debts on an unprecedented scale.

This is the real legacy left to the British people by Dame Hilda and her Stock Market Bandits as we can see today.

As this article is being posted, spontaneous demonstrations of celebration of Thatcher's demise have started in several cities throughout Britain, much to the chagrin of the Whore Press and the Sycophant Circus in London!

 

 

FearFeasaMacLéinn

Áth Cliath/Dublin
Aibreán/April 9, 2013